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Senators call for Celona to resign
"At this juncture, we need to restore the public's full faith in the Senate; misconduct should not be tolerated," Sheehan said.

1:00 AM EST on Tuesday, February 17, 2004 BY KATHERINE GREGG, SCOTT MAYEROWITZ and MIKE STANTON Journal State House Bureau

PROVIDENCE -- Pressure mounted yesterday on North Providence Democrat John A. Celona to resign, when six of his colleagues -- three of them Senate committee chairmen -- publicly urged him to give up his seat or face possible censure.

The senators cited several reasons for going public with their extraordinary demand on a colleague under fire. But there was one unifying message: that the ethical questions surrounding Celona's undisclosed role as a consultant to CVS, while he chaired the Senate committee that handles health-care legislation, had hurt the entire Senate.

"This is nothing personal. This is purely political," said Sen. V. Susan Sosnowski, D-South Kingstown, the chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Evironment and Agriculture. "I just think it is hurting the Senate. People look at government with a a jaundiced eye because of this."

Said J. Michael Lenihan, D-East Greenwich, chairman of the Senate Committee on Government Operations: "Senator Celona has already admitted to his conflict-of-interest situation. That admission along with a growing list of potential charges merits his resignation from the Senate."

Echoed Elizabeth H. Roberts, D-Cranston, the chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Health and Human Services: "During this year when health-care issues are among the most important facing us as legislators, we cannot continue to work effectively with revelations of ethical conflicts on these issues harming our credibility and ability to find solutions,"

"It has become evident at this time that Senator Celona is not going to voluntarily resign from the Senate," said. Sen. James C. Sheehan, D-North Kingstown.

"At this juncture, we need to restore the public's full faith in the Senate; misconduct should not be tolerated," Sheehan said. "We need to get a hold of the situation and turn it around."

Unavailable for comment yesterday, Celona has been in the center of a firestorm since The Journal reported his undisclosed ties to CVS and Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island.

A paid consultant to the Woonsocket-based pharmacy chain from 2000 until last August, he did not list the company as an employer on his annual disclosure statements. He also helped a production company, CRI Communications, win financial backing from Blue Cross for a public-access TV show that he cohosted.

Celona apologized in December, saying: "I should not have put myself in a position that may be inappropriate."  Prior to yesterday, only three senators had called for his resignation: Marc C. Cote, D-Woonsocket, Leonidas P. Raptakis, D-Coventry, and Joseph Polisena, D-Johnston.

Questions were then asked if CVS was also an insurance client of Senate President William V. Irons, who chose to resign to spare himself and the Senate, he said, from more strife and controversy.

At the urging of new Senate President Joseph Montalbano, Celona last month resigned as chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Housing and Municipal Government, but has continued to show up for Senate sessions.

But Lenihan said Celona's "continued presence detracts from" the work of the Senate.  "There is a great irony and something of a disconnect in expecting Senator Celona to vote on ethics reform and new public disclosure issues when he has already admitted to culpability under the existing guidelines and statutes," Lenihan said. "That admission alone merits his resignation."

Some senators were more surprised than others to hear from a recent Channel 10 newscast that Celona had been on the payroll of a subsidiary of Roger Williams Hospital -- The Village at Elmhurst. On May 1, 1998, The Journal reported that Celona had been hired -- months after siding with the hospital against legislation to block a potential buyout by the Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corp. -- as a $700-a-week consultant to the assisted-living facility, co-owned by a Roger Williams subsidiary.

The consulting agreement he provided the Ethics Commission required him to "heighten awareness among seniors" of programs at the Village. The legislator was also required to "keep abreast of legislative issues and regulations at the local, state and federal levels that impact or could impact the Village." The commission advised him not to vote or work on legislation that could affect any such facility.

Celona no longer works for the Village at Elmhurst, according to Roger Williams Hospital spokesman Brett Davey. Davey said his year-to-year contract expired at the end of last month, and it was not renewed because the Village no longer needed his services. Neither the investigation nor Celona's loss of clout in the Senate had any bearing, Davey said.

Sheehan and Sosnowski said they were unaware of Celona's ties to the hospital.

But Roberts said she was aware that Celona worked as a consultant for a subsidiary of the hospital because Celona himself, over the years, "mentioned his employment there as an issue when bills came up related to assisted-living facilities to make sure he wasn't involved in those."  "So I was not surprised by that issue . . . but just the continuing revelations about CVS, about Blue Cross . . . It is the combination of all of those together," said Roberts.

"'As we dig deeper into the health issues it is just becoming difficult to work with that issue still hanging over us."

She cited, as an example, the renewed effort to ban health insurers from limiting the pharmacies their customers use. A House-passed version of the "pharmacy freedom of choice bill" died in Celona's committee last year.

"That is a very complicated issue and I am strugging with it as a chairman," Roberts said. "What I don't want to be adding to that is the discussion of what happened to that bill in the past and how it came to happen. I would like to put those issues behind us and I think that is hard to do with Senator Celona still serving in the chamber with us."

Neither Montalbano nor Senate Majority Leader M. Teresa Paiva Weed responded to inquiries yesterday.

But Sosnowski said she believed Montalbano intended to talk to Celona about the senators' concerns over the weekend, but did not know if the talk took place.

Sen. Rhoda Perry, D-Providence, did not sign onto either of the press releases that went out yesterday. But she said she, too, is "very concerned that Senator Celona has not resigned. I had hoped over these last few weeks he would have come to that conclusion himself without any additional pressure from his colleagues." "

At her "first community meeting this year," Perry said, "one of the big issues that night had to do with what is being called corruption in the State House and what was very pointedly asked of Rep. [Gordon] Fox and myself was: 'What are you doing about it?' "

"It really is evidence that more movement needs to take place and if a momentum is building, it is building a case for him to leave."

Sosnowksi said, "We have talked to the leadership about putting in a bill to censure Senator Celona,," and "they are having legal counsel look into what would happen with a bill to ask for his censure, what committee would it go to and I guess just as importantly, would it interfere with the [ethics and state police] investigations that are going on.

"That's why we decided we should ask for his resignation. It would really remove that cloud from the Senate . . . We don't know what is going to come out next and I really feel it is hindering the Senate." But Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch's spokesman, Michael Healey, had this to say about the attempts to censure Celona and persuade him to leave the Senate: "Neither would affect the investigation."

Asked the status of the probe, Healey said: "It's ongoing and it is going well and it is still in state control at this point."

None of the senators who called for Celona's resignation yesterday said they had directly spoken to him about his consulting work or about resigning.

But many, such as Raptakis, said they were afraid of this becoming "a never-ending issue."

"I still don't know what's out there -- what other issues might come out to the surface," Raptakis said yesterday, renewing a previous call for Celona's resignation. "There is a cloud over the Senate. We don't know if it's going to pour or if the cloud is going to break up and it's going to be a sunny day."

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